In light of the mind-boggling news that the 2018 Tomb Raider was actually getting a sequel, I had to remind myself that I hadn’t ever watched Alicia Vikander’s adaptation of the reboot.
I’ll be honest and say that the previews for the movie looked campy and horrible, and Vikander’s portrayal of Lady Croft didn’t exactly sell me on the whole thing. But I’ve been wrong before. I thought Daniel Craig would make a horrible James Bond, and yet he was arguably the best Bond since Sean Connery (who let’s face it, was only the best because he’s Sean Connery.)
So I thought, ‘okay, I’ll give her a chance.’ Who knows, maybe it would be the quieter moments of the movie that Vikander best encapsulated the famous heroine, outside of all the flashy, action-y crap in the trailers. So I did, I gave it a chance.
Nope. Sorry, Alicia. You’re probably a great person and a fine actor, and I have nothing against you, personally. You played the part you were given and you did the best you could with it. But you were mis-cast. It’s not your fault, you were given the opportunity to play probably one of, if not the, most famous video game characters of all time, and you jumped at it. Anyone would have. But that doesn’t mean you were right for the part.
It took me a while to put my finger on what it was that didn’t sit right with me. At first I thought it was the appearance of Lara Croft. Vikander doesn’t really look all that much like Lara, old or new, but even that wasn’t quite it. Going back to my Bond reference, Daniel Craig didn’t look anything like the suave, black-haired Bond that I grew up with (the Dalton-Brosnan era), but the longer I watched his film, the more I realized I didn’t care. A believable performance would’ve over-written any reservations I had about what I felt Lara should look like.
Vikander’s performance was… fine. It wasn’t bad. The movie was bad, but it wasn’t Vikander’s fault. It was just a bad movie (seriously, how do you make Walton Goggins boring? HOW??).
But my main argument goes back to Vikander being mis-cast, and not because of her acting abilities or her looks, but because of her presence. Lara Croft commands an on-screen presence that Vikander’s girl-next-door approach just can’t deliver. This is not squarely her fault, but more of the movie’s inability to portray her as such. Sure, there’s a boxing scene that tries to establish her fighting prowess, and a bicycle chase game to establish her athletic ability, but neither of those are adequate training for fighting mercenaries and surviving the harsh wilderness of a remote island, something that her urban lifestyle never would’ve prepared her for.
So let’s switch over to the video game that the movie was adapted from for comparison. Lara is essentially the same young girl as in the movie, inexperienced in combat. The difference here though, is that she has a mentor in Conrad Roth, who taught her many things growing up, including how to shoot, among other survival skills. Her ability to cope with the harsh wilderness made sense. Combat was something she was thrown into with both feet, and while arguments have been made with how quickly she adapts to killing, it’s a video game, what’re ya gonna do?
Vikander’s Lara has no such explanation. Hell, even the ridiculously over-the-top Angelina Jolie versions picked up with Lara later on in life, already established as a Tomb Raider, using silly training routines to stay sharp. Sure, they were campy, but at least that movie knew what it was and rolled with it. As a result, the movie was actually pretty entertaining, even it it was completely ludicrous. Plus, Jolie had the presence. Maybe it was the fake boobs or Jolie’s smoking hot face, but it was very believable that when she walked in a room as Lara Croft in a skin tight cocktail dress, the entire room would stop and stare. I can’t see Vikander pulling that off, even in the sequel.
As for the plot, I don’t know how you fuck that up, but they managed. Walton Goggins had already proven that he could play a crazy religious type, and he had a wonderful opportunity to be the whacked out cult leader Mathias, but instead they had him being a boring as shit mercenary. None, I repeat, none of the crazy fucked up sacrificial imagery that made him such a creepy psycho in the video game was utilized, and instead of Himiko being a vengeful spirit tied to her sacrificed corpse on the island, she was a disease-carrier? Really?
I can’t help but wonder why those involved with the film were so afraid to add a supernatural element to the movie. Were they trying to make it more grounded and believable? Nothing that happens in that film is believable. They wouldn’t have even had to include the re-animated corpses of Himiko’s elite guard, just have Mathias try to sacrifice (insert important character they left out of the movie here) to Himiko and there you go, bam, finale.
Also, having Lara’s father still be alive on the island was completely pointless. It served no purpose whatsoever.
Okay, I’ve ranted on this movie long enough. Suffice it to say that my initial impressions of the movie were accurate this time. As this movie was playing on my television, I actually stopped paying attention several times. It was that formulaic and dull. The old Tomb Raider movies might have been stupid as hell, but at least they kept my attention. That presence.
